ROSS DAWSON: The rise of crowdfunding is creating new opportunities for funding for businesses, this has the promise of changing the financing landscape and banks and other funding institutions need to be watching this space carefully.

SIMON PALAN: But the Australian Bankers Association's Steven Munchenberg says it's not a threat to traditional bank lending models.

STEVEN MUCHENBERG: Banks in Australia for example do trillions of dollars' worth of lending. I think it's very unlikely that even a significant portion of that would be replaced by crowdfunding.

SIMON PALAN: The corporate regulator says crowdfunding is booming.

But ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) also says it has challenges too - in Australia, website operators need a license to raise money, and authorities warn that there's a high potential for fraud on crowdfunding websites.

The advice is to research the project widely and head the usual warnings whenever putting bank details online.